water and holes in his hands

so i'm thinking of buddhas and humming the song "sons and daughters of hungry ghosts," and just then i run across the ida b. wells memorial sutra library - sometimes it just slams on the synchronizer and comes all together at once.

this is where i found the Ghost-King Sutra: it's part of the [very long] Sutra Of Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha's Fundamental Vows.

This is how Buddha instructed the bodhisattva
Ksitigarbha about a Ghost King.


a real place, ksitigarbha's temple, in taiwan.
i say his name "kitsa-garbo."

At one time, many ghost kings came to Heaven, to the heaven where Buddha was teaching the Bodhisattva named Ksitigarbha. Those who came included
Evil Poison Ghost King,
Evil Doing Ghost King, Dispute Ghost King,
White Tiger Ghost King, Blood Tiger Ghost King,
Red Tiger Contagious Ghost King,
Disaster Ghost King, Flying Body Ghost King,
Lightning Flash Ghost King, Wolf Teeth Ghost King,
Thousand Eyes Ghost King, Eating Beast Ghost King,
Rock-Carrying Ghost King, Exhaustion Ghost King,
Calamity Ghost King,
Food Ghost King, Wealth Ghost King,
Domestic Animal Ghost King,
Mountain Spirit Ghost King,
Birth Ghost King, Life Ghost King,
Disease Ghost King, Danger Ghost King,
Three Eyes Ghost King, Four Eyes Ghost King,
Five Eyes Ghost King,
the Fire Spirit King, the Dharma Protector King, and so on.
There were major and minor ghost kings who live in all the worlds and rule over specific areas. These ghost kings all came to the Buddha's assembly, and reverently stood beside the Bodhisattva.

A Ghost King named Life addressed Buddha, saying, "World-Honored One, I am in charge of humans' lives. Fundamentally, I am willing to help them. But they have little happiness and peace when dying. Why should this be?

"I vow to help those who are about to die, regardless of whether they are good or evil. World-Honored One, when men or women are going to die, they are incapable of clear thinking, they cannot tell good from bad, their eyes are unable to see and their ears are unable to hear.

"If only their relatives will pray for them and recite scriptures, then the dead people will be turned away from evil, and all devils and ghosts will retreat from them. World-Honored One, if anyone who is about to die hears a Buddha's or a Bodhisattva's name, these people can be preserved from all evils immediately."

Buddha said to Life Ghost King, "You have great benevolence to make such a great vow to protect all beings, both dying and dead. In future generations whenever anyone faces death, do not forget the vow you have made, and release all the beings from hardships, and allow them to observe happiness and peace."

The ghost king replied to Buddha, "Do not be concerned. I shall do my best to protect all the beings in all the worlds."

And Buddha told the Bodhisattva, "This Ghost King has already supported and protected all beings at death. At this time, he is a Ghost King named Life, but eons from now, in an eon named Tranquility, he will be a Buddha named No-Appearance-Thus-I-Come. The world he lives in will be called Pure Dwelling. Ksitigarbha, everything about this ghost king is unimaginable: the people he is saving, in all the worlds and all the heavens, are innumerable."


sons and daughters of hungry ghosts
i got water and i got holes
so, la la la la la la...

...and now you know something you didn't before.

good decades

oh decades decades decades decades



i lived in three gardens:
the secret garden, the ritual garden, and the danger garden.


the secret garden was a place of sun and peace and growing things, rich in laughter and song, hidden amid a vast estate of desolation.

the ritual garden, a ceremonious place of seemly care and and well crafted rhythme, where good old ways were honored and magic wishes took root.

the danger garden, where lifesaving poisons were decocted, savagery damned with drums and dances, blood shed, bad dreams netted, hearts made wild and true.


at first, i balanced along a railroad track in the summer sun with a cat and a toddler and we made up our own words.


later, we sang charms to the moon at the close of the year, the festival of the magic boy that everyone loved; we called down the snow and lit christmas candles and the cat had kittens.

later kindness revealed its cruelty and vice-versa, every grand narrative confessed ambiguity, and when the last child came, it turned out that a tiny child pulling herself up by her bootstraps, strong as a giant, was the way it was going to be from now on, not only the way it had been.


having three children became not,as i'd expected, a set of three cosmologies or three mythologies, so much as three varied modes of action and perception, each blended into the others but each unthinned, undiluted after all, three harmonious ways of moving through the world, which i've learned by heart. i don't know how it feels to them, not at all. i only know these three more ways of moving through the world, which are really one way. it is my way.


i laid drowsing on a blanket in the sun with dragonflies humming while three children played with little toy horses and robots in the sandy stream, telling each other what to do next and then doing it; this really happened. i laid eyes closed book in hand enchanted by the simultanaeity of insects and children's voices and trickling water and wind in the trees and that is my idea of Heaven and i believe in it because it really happened.

now these things are moving into history and soon i can't keep in the front of my consciousness any more where you are or what time you'll be home, because you're somewhere far away, i don't even know where, and there isn't any home, i don't know where you'll go home to - you'll have to find your own home, i suppose.


but that's a gloomy scenario. naturally we will gather together once in a grand while, somewhere or other, marking occasions, and act as we remember, the four of us, when we all lived in the forest and nobody lived anywhere else.

children's birthdays are supposed to make mothers happy! but here i sit grieving, just wishing it would all happen again, just all start over again.